Feb 27, 2017

There is a tremendous battle over the right to freely share information in public and private places. Liberals are banding together to block conservatives and Christians from sharing their views.

On various campuses, the liberal establishment has banned anyone who would dare speak positively of Donald Trump. Because they define Trump as evil, school administrators feel they have a green light to trample on the liberties of others.

Something has gone horribly wrong when you have the younger generation screaming “Fascist,” yet have become the very thing they claim to loathe.

A mindset of intolerance has been normalized amongst the left, promoted by the media, even accepting violence in order to “stomp out” those who are targeted as “hatemongers.”

The liberal media has become so convinced that it’s their job to tell the public what to think, those very words are starting to come out of their mouths. In a discussion about fears that President Donald Trump is “trying to control the media,” MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski slipped up and said that controlling “exactly what people think” is her job (and that of the rest of the media).

There is such a suppression of freedom in this country that can find themselves in instant trouble for the most casual remark. Comedian Steven Martin was recently criticized when he posted the following note in the wake of Carrie Fisher’s death:

“When I was a young man, Carrie Fisher was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She turned out to be witty and bright as well,” said Martin. His sin was failing to match up her beauty and wittiness.

Offending other people’s cultures is another depravity that will force celebrities to issue apologies. Hilary Duff and Chris Hemsworth both had to beg for forgiveness when photos showed each of them dressed as Native Americans at costume parties. Justin Timberlake was accused of cultural appropriation after sending a tweet praising actor Jesse Williams’ BET Awards speech.

The pettiness of the left puts the average citizen in danger. A Florida Teacher was “reassigned” after she praised Trump’s Immigration police on Facebook. Liberal groups have been trying to get L.L. Bean to remove Linda Bean from the company’s board of directors just because she donated $30,000 to a pro-Trump Political Action Committee. It is disgusting to have arrived at the point where people can’t freely express their political views without being confronted by Nazi stormtroopers.

Web-based organizations are also under attack from the left. The Gatestone Institute is a non-partisan think tank that’s dedicated to educating the public about what the mainstream media fails to report. Last week, the president of GI sent out a letter that described the opposition with which the organization was having to deal:

Gatestone Institute has recently come under smear campaigns from both extremist websites and the mainstream media. Facebook has repeatedly obstructed Gatestone content — sometimes with outright acts of censorship. Google has restricted our access to its Google News platform, and banned us from using its advertising platform.

I’ve noticed suppression from Google against Rapture Ready and many other prophecy sites. In the past couple months the rankings for prophecy sites has been dropping. If you type the word “Rapture” in the search window at Google, the top results are now general references and old news articles. Rapture Ready should be in top three like it is on Yahoo and Bing. Chris of Rapture Forums told me his site was listed on page 12. It should be in the top 20 sites.

Alex Jones has posted several videos on the censorship attack against conservative sites. He created a site to fight to protect the First Amendment. It’s called the Coalition to Defend Free Speech. What I found interesting is that the Coalition to Defend Free Speech does not show up on Google. You have to go to Yahoo or Bing to find it.

The website NaturalNews.com has been totally blocked by Google. I don’t agree with some of this site’s views, but I don’t think a search engine should be able use monopolistic powers to set itself up as an Orwellian arbiter of truth. Mike Adams runs NaturalNews and he has created a Petition page that will be used to get the attention of the White House. Please sign-up and make your voices heard. Here is the link: Petition to Ban Google’s Blatant Suppression of Free Speech.

It is ironic that the company founded under the mantra “Don’t be evil” is now doing the devil’s bidding. If Google is going to block people from finding accurate search results, it will find soon itself as the K-Mart of search engines.

When President Trump said the media are the “enemy of the people,” he was absolutely correct. I truly believe that Satan spends more time in the media headquarters of New York than he does in the political capitals of Washington D.C.

If the American people fail to rise up and put the media in its place we’re going to eventually find ourselves living in a North Korea type dictatorship. About 99 percent of the North Korean citizens believe that (fat boy) Kim Jong-Un is a god because that’s all they hear from the state controlled media.

The American press has already poisoned the minds of 50 percent of the country. They are dead set on getting the other half. If the Rapture occurs soon, they may get their chance.

“And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” (Matthew 24:11-13).

–Todd

The Departure

Author’s note: This week, I’m doing something I’ve done only once before during the course of writing for this Nearing Midnight column. I’m repeating a commentary I wrote previously –this one on January 16, 2006.

I am doing so because I believe the Lord Impressed upon my spirit that the Departure is so very near, and our minds and spiritual hearts are too often far from that stunning event that can take place at any given second. It’s time to “look up” is the exhortation of the hour.

The Scripture is haunting. It echoes and reverberates throughout the spiritual hallways of the Church with each passing hour.

“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils” (1 Tim. 4:1).

This forewarning fits into the last-days pattern, also given by the Apostle Paul, in the familiar prophetic passage: “Let no man deceive you by any means:

for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of Perdition…” (2 Thes. 2:3).

The “falling away,” apostasia in Greek, means a “departure from.” Paul prophesied in the 2 Timothy 4:1 passage that there will come a time at the end of the Church Age when people will depart from the “faith.” He foretells in 2 Thessalonians that this will be a general “falling away,” the apostasy of the endtime. What is this “faith” from which people will fall away, and who are the “people” who will fall away? Another crucial question is: Can the departure that God, through Paul, forewarned about be recognized when it occurs?

“Faith,” as here defined, must, by context, be the faith in the One who is at the heart of the Gospel–faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God, chosen from the foundation of the world to be the propitiation for the sin that separates fallen man from God. It is the faith you and I must have in order to confess with our mouths that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, and to believe in the deepest part of our spirits that God raised Him from the dead.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9).

A person can’t fall from a position (doctrinally speaking in this case) he never has attained. The “people,” then, whom Paul the apostle is writing about in his prophecies of 1 Timothy 4:1 and 2 Thessalonians 2:3 are those who have believed in Jesus Christ for salvation of their souls.

This brings us to the question: Can the departure God, through Paul, forewarned about be recognized when it occurs? To recognize that “falling away”–that

apostasia, or apostasy— when it begins to happen, will almost certainly give the Christian attuned to God’s will a heads-up on the nearness of the Tribulation

era, thus to the nearness of the rapture of the Church.

We have looked at the “faith” as faith in Jesus for salvation, and at the “people”who will “depart” from the faith as being the Church–that is, the true Christians who are alive at the time of the end, when the apostasy takes place.

Although there are those who think this departure includes the possibility of one losing one’s salvation, the “falling away” of 2 Thessalonians 2:3 cannot include that meaning. A quick look at Romans 8:38 and 39, to name just one security-of-the-believer passage, shows that God’s Word teaches that the believer can’t depart from the Heavenly Father to the point of losing his or her family status. Jesus, in John chapter 17, makes that absolutely clear. I suggest that if you have questions about this, read the Scriptures I just mentioned.

What, then, is meant by “departing from the “faith”? Glad you asked. The “faith” mentioned in 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy 2:3 is a collection of faith principles wrapped up in the Lord Jesus Christ. These principles are doctrines put forth by the Word of God. The Word of God is none other than the Lord Jesus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

“People” at the time of the “falling away” will “depart” from the “faith” –the doctrines put forth by the Word of God, who is Jesus Christ. This departure will mark the generation of Christians at the very end of the Church Age.

The question that applies most relevantly to us today is: Are we seeing signals of the departure about which Paul forewarned?

We have analyzed, dissected, examined, and inspected every end-time signal found in God’s Word many times in these raptureready.com webpages: Israel again in the land of promise; the EU looking to be the reviving Roman Empire; Russia, Persia (modern Iran) and other nations looking to be a nucleus that will one day form the Gog-Magog force of Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39. These, plus, all of the other end-time characteristics of this generation.

However, I believe the most insidious of all the things taking place under the clever, devious hand of the devil –Satan—is the falling away, the departure from the faith being currently orchestrated by Lucifer, the fallen one.

This departure is evident to the spiritually discerning when looking at the church growth movement. This “seeker friendly” approach to both the saved and the lost (all who don’t know Christ) through New Age, corporation-type seminar seductiveness and brainwashing techniques that water down or completely eliminate true Bible doctrine is leading in a profound departure from the “faith once delivered” (see Jude 1: 3).

The new paradigm instituted by the champions of the church growth movement is the shift from New Testament Christianity to “New Spirituality-Driven Christianity.”

Like in the modern corporate organization, invented in large part by German economic guru Peter Drucker, who mentored some of the leading designers of the church growth movement, the system is more an organism than an organization –adopting Drucker’s model based upon Freudian psychology and Darwinian evolutionary principles. The individual is assigned a value, and he must fit in, or be removed from the system. To put it as I heard one person of the movement say: “Pillars just hold things up. So, they need to be moved out of the way.” So, those who hold to doctrine must get out of the way so no one will have their feelings hurt by talk of sin, and blood atonement, and eternal punishment in the place called Hell, if repentance is not forthcoming. Again, the Apostle Paul wrote God’s view of this watering down of doctrine:

“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8).

Are we at the point of departure from the faith that is prophesied for the very end of the Church Age? Maybe we can get a better sense by looking at one more area of Scripture pertaining to the matter: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Tim. 4:1-4).

There is another prophetically scheduled departure to consider. It’s the one we should be looking forward to. It is a God-ordained departure that will remove every child of God of the Church Age –living and dead—from Planet Earth in one millisecond of time:

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Tit. 2:13).